For over sixty years, women have been conditioned to believe they can meet their own idealistic goal of “having it all by following the ‘Strong Independent Woman®” narrative. Modern women are only now concluding that this pro-woman life plan has been nothing but feel-good advertising.

My response is less “Don’t worry, we all struggle to figure it out,” and more “Don’t worry, balance doesn’t exist.”

In other words, it’s easy for me to fantasise about, say, a life spent achieving stellar professional success, while also excelling as a parent and partner, while also dedicating myself to training for marathons or lengthy meditation retreats or volunteering in my community – because so long as I’m only fantasising, I get to imagine all of them unf